RIP Hunter S. Thompson

[ilya]

HST has killed himself.

[bear187]

Who? Sorry I'm new.

[MicroBob]

He's a famous writer (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas...which became a movie starring Johnny Depp....also Bill murray played him in a different movie).


Is this for real? where did you see this?

[ilya]

Bang Bang (http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=518062)

[AngryCola]

[ QUOTE ]
He's a famous writer (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas...which became a movie starring Johnny Depp....also Bill murray played him in a different movie).


Is this for real? where did you see this?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's very sad, and quite odd.

I'm sure there are many places to read this story, but here's one link.

Link (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7005168/)

[nolanfan34]

IIRC, he just got married last year or so. Sounded very happy in his ESPN Page 2 columns at that time.

Sad news.

[astroglide]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40737-2005Feb20.html

[tdarko]

[ QUOTE ]
It's very sad, and quite odd.


[/ QUOTE ]
yes incredibly sad but IMO not that odd.
he was incredibly talented and will be missed. /images/graemlins/frown.gif

[Zeno]

I just read this and was going to post a link.

This is, to me at least, not that much of a surprise.

I have many of his books and enjoyed most of his writings. I also have a biography about him written by Peter O. Whitmer, called When The Going Gets Weird.

-Zeno

I'll post more later if I have time.

[jar]

OK, that's downright scary. I just watched the first 20 minutes of the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas movie, and decided I wasn't in the mood for it after all. I check 2+2 and this is the first thread I see.

[ThaSaltCracka]

was he high when he did it?

[pokerjo22]

Man, that's upsetting. Never realised he was a depressive.

[A_C_Slater]

I think the Rum diary is one of the best books I've ever read. And The Great Shark Hunt is the by far the greatest short story I've ever read. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas = greatest movie. Ever.


It seems he went the way Hemingway did.

IMO Thompson > Hemingway, Twain, Faulkner, and all the other "great" American authors that they want you to read in grade school.

[deacsoft]

[ QUOTE ]
HST has killed himself.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wow. What a bummer.

[ThaSaltCracka]

[ QUOTE ]
IMO Thompson > Hemingway, Twain, Faulkner, and all the other "great" American authors that they want you to read in grade school.

[/ QUOTE ] good thing thats just your opinion.

[A_C_Slater]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
IMO Thompson > Hemingway, Twain, Faulkner, and all the other "great" American authors that they want you to read in grade school.

[/ QUOTE ] good thing thats just your opinion.

[/ QUOTE ]

Have you read his stuff?

[Zeno]

Hunter Thompson, aside from his exciting drug experimentations, was an entrenched alcoholic and a heavy drinker since an early age. At 67, not much could have been left of his liver. Even in the early 90's his body was battered and showing the effects of heavy abuse.

I wonder if he went out 'Hemingway Style' with a shotgun blast, or used, say, a .357 Smith & Wesson Revolver. At any rate he said goodbye on his own terms and not wasting away in some antiseptic hospital bed with tubes sucking and blowing in and out of his body, or worse yet, keep alive at the beckoning of the State, deprived of the ultimate right of dying on your own terms and slipping into oblivion, but instead on terms dictated by an overwhelming vicious and idiotic state system.

He knew his death would be News. I wonder if he left an obituary or note or some crass screed or byline to announce to the world that he was taking that silent ride to fame that so many others have also chosen. Or not. Perhaps it was all just some private deed and that no comment is necessary or wanted. Either way, he will be missed.

Bye Hunter S. Thompson of the double thumb peyote button.

-Zeno

[[censored]]

HST ESPN Page 2 Archive (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/archive?columnist=hunter_s._thompson&root=page2)

[AngryCola]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
It's very sad, and quite odd.


[/ QUOTE ]
yes incredibly sad but IMO not that odd.
he was incredibly talented and will be missed. /images/graemlins/frown.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

I only say it's odd because he was reportedly going through better times in his life.

[VBM]

i only followed his work on ESPN page 2, but found him engaging and fun to read.

very sad & i'll certainly miss his columns.

[shemp]

is from Generation of Swine, "The Geek from Coral Gables." He makes fun of news coverage of hurricanes. I've reread it several times over the years.

[tdarko]

yeah marriage and all but i guess we have seen too many super talented artists (musicians, authors, actors/actresses) destroy themselves that i almost expect it. still sad but his work will live on.

[A_C_Slater]

"He was an old, sick, and very troubled man, and the illusion of peace and contentment was not enough for him-not even when his friends came up from Cuba and played bullfight with him in the Tram. So finally, and for what he must of thought the best of reasons, he ended it with a shotgun." --- Hunter S. Thompson reporting on the suicide of Hemingway.

[wonderwes]

This is truely a sad day. He was one of my favorite writers.

[jokerthief]

[ QUOTE ]
Man, that's upsetting. Never realised he was a depressive.

[/ QUOTE ]

Try living like him for even six months, only then will you understand how much of an ironman he must have been to make it 67 years. Walking that line invariably leads one to the singularity of despair.

One more beer will increase the cheer of laughing shadows armed with fear. Smoke em if you got em and see the haze creep deep within your layered maze. Night falls always as confusion clouds the hallways of a mind lost in time, entropy there to drop the dime (always the Reaper's tattle) you will not win this battle.

Upsetting indeed. /images/graemlins/frown.gif

[wonderwes]

I am going to make sure I rewatch Fear and Loathing (like I ever need a reason to) to pay tribute to Thompson.

[MelK]

What a moron!

So his phone number goes public on Paris Hilton's address book and he decides to steal Heminway's claim to fame.

Loser!

[bukkrukk]

Sad,sad,sad...

Loved the stuff on ESPN page2.

[2planka]

Just heard this on the news.... real shame.

Raul Duke is gonzo.

[Transference]

Damn tragedy, but you somehow felt this was the way he was gonna go.

I'll raise a glass in tribute tonight.

Also, if anyones up for it post your favorite excerpts/quotes.

[Ray Zee]

some day you will all understand it was not a sad day in his life.

[hyde]

neither movie can do justice to that great book.

though it helps to have been been playing with similar fire at the time it was written.
no one could match his excesses.

[Matty]

The Last Article Dr. Thompson Wrote for Rolling Stone (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/6562575?rnd=1099009920793&has-player=true).

Maybe some clues as to why he left ...

[2planka]

Conspiracy theories, anyone?

[A_C_Slater]

[ QUOTE ]
some day you will all understand it was not a sad day in his life.

[/ QUOTE ]


What do you mean by this cryptic statement?

[ilya]

[ QUOTE ]
some day you will all understand it was not a sad day in his life.

[/ QUOTE ]

I never said I thought it was.

[2planka]

Could Ray's comment be a reference to some sort of illness? Lord knows the chap had plenty of risk factors.

[bholdr]

F U C K YOU!

[fnord_too]

I remember him giving an "interview" to Conan O'Brien once. The condition was it was at his ranch, and Conan had to participate in drinking heavily and firing large guns.

Several years earlier when it was still Letterman's show, he did an interview with Dave in a hotel room they were shooting the show in. I think he had a case of scotch with him.

I guess at 67 he figured he was done. Rest in Peace Hunter, I don't think you got much rest when you were alive.

[jakethebake]

[ QUOTE ]
Who? Sorry I'm new.

[/ QUOTE ]
OMG. POTD!

[jakethebake]

[ QUOTE ]
some day you will all understand it was not a sad day in his life.

[/ QUOTE ]

nice post. great point.

[Myrtle]

Ray.........

An old friend was an acquaintance of Hunter S. and his wild-man attorney side-kick , Lazlo Toth, back in the wild & wooly 60’s....

I’ll never forget the night my wife & I spent at a bar in Chicago at the Hilton in the mid 80’s with said friend and another guy (name long since forgotten) who was a friend and neighbor to Hunter S.

For a few hours, we were regaled with detailed ‘Hunter stories’ that were so wild, funny and crazy that our sides literally hurt from laughing. I can honestly never remember laughing as much or as hard as we did, as we heard the detailed blow-by-blow of how Hunter & Lazlo ‘assassinated’ various pieces of furniture that they kept dragging out of Hunter’s house.

Although it’s a distant memory, and I can’t remember all of the details clearly, I do remember an incredibly hilarious recounting of couches, chairs and other various pieces of furniture being dispatched in numbers of creative ways via an assortment of firearms, dynamite and incineration by the two of them in an alcohol and drug induced bacchanal to the good old ‘Ultra-V’.

At the time, our teenage nephew was a great Hunter S. fan & we mentioned it to them, and I’ll be damned if about a month or so later an autographed Hunter S. book didn’t show up in the mail with a personal message to nephew.

I’m sure nephew still has it.....I’ll have to call him now to remember the moment.

In any case, Ray, I think I might understand what you’re implying........I don’t think that Hunter left much in the back-room of life as he passed through it.

[brettbrettr]

[ QUOTE ]
Man, that's upsetting. Never realised he was a depressive.

[/ QUOTE ]

Really?

[Tommy Angelo]

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." -- Hunter Thompson

[Tommy Angelo]

"some day you will all understand it was not a sad day in his life."

You're a very wise man, Ray. I hope you live long enough to get an invite to my going away party.

[IndieMatty]

There was no point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.


RIP Hunter.

[GreywolfNYC]

He was a genius and a true, American original. We will not see the likes of him again.

[Luv2DriveTT]

Fare thee well good Doctor....


For those who have never read Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, the first sentence is one of the most memorable in all of American literature.
[ QUOTE ]
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

[/ QUOTE ]


TT /images/graemlins/club.gif

[toman8r]

I'd like to say RIP. But that doesn't seem appropriate. I know not the truth in these matters but wherever Hunter S. might be, if his soul is anywhere, peace is nowhere nearby. Just the way it should be for a man who embraced madness.

[ethan]

[ QUOTE ]
some day you will all understand it was not a sad day in his life.

[/ QUOTE ]

Indeed.

Hopefully HST will get his cannon.